Wards at their current state seem to work OK. But an AH does offer some things the wards can not, one thing I enjoyed about the AH system in ff11 was that I could see the history of items, being able to see who sold that HQ item, or what that item was sold at the last 15 times. AH would also save a lot of time in regards to traveling to the wards to pick up your item or to sell an item, this could be very time consuming if you are in the market for buying or selling multiple items. Personally I think the game could do both systems, markets could be used for the 3 current towns, and once a 4rth neutral town is added, that town could use the AH system, or something along those lines.